Still Practicing Radical Acceptance

Living inside what is. Learning to hold both.

Radical acceptance keeps finding me.

Not in a lightning-bolt kind of way.
More like a quiet tapping on the shoulder.

Again.
And again.
And again.

I wrote about radical acceptance years ago, standing at a different edge of the same ocean.

Back then, I had just hit some kind of rock bottom.
I started seeing a new therapist.
She asked me to look into radical acceptance.

I ordered the book immediately.

Then, like any modern human trying to make sense of pain, I Googled memes.

The first one I found brought me to my knees.

At the time, I was still in denial about Carter’s disabilities.

Not in a conscious, deliberate way.
Not in an “I don’t believe this is real” way.

But in the quiet, complicated way denial often shows up:

I loved the version of Carter I knew at home.
Sweet.
Loving.
Busy.
Caring.

A little turkey sometimes.
Mostly gentle and tender.

And I couldn’t reconcile that boy with the words that followed him at school:

Elopement.
Aggression.
Dissociation.
Screaming.
Non-compliant.

Two sides of the same coin.
Both true.
Both belonging to the same child.

I was stuck in the space between those realities.

I knew what those words meant.
I knew where that road could lead.

And I was grasping, pleading, bargaining with God and the universe for it not to be so.

He can’t need that.
He is not that.
That is not Carter.

I had too much history.
Too much memory.
Too much knowing.

My years in residential and day treatment shaped me—
gave me deep compassion,
lifelong relationships,
and a front-row seat to trauma and grief
and systems that struggle to hold complex humans.

So I told myself:

Sure, he’s complicated.
But he isn’t that.

What I see now, with so much tenderness for my younger self, is this:

I wasn’t rejecting Carter.
I was trying to survive the idea of what his life might require.

Radical acceptance, then, looked like this:

Letting go of the version of the story I desperately wanted.
Letting myself hear what teams were actually telling me.
Letting myself see through both a mom heart and a school lens.

It was only when I accepted Carter fully—
for who he is with me
and who he is without me—
that I could begin to move.

“A moment of radical acceptance is a moment of genuine freedom.”
— Tara Brach

I remember the shift.

When I stopped fighting reality, I could finally think.

I could imagine different kinds of safety.
Different kinds of settings.
Different kinds of futures.

I learned that public school, as beautiful and meaningful as it can be, is not built for every nervous system.

I learned that loving your child fiercely
and acknowledging their need for intensive support
can exist at the same time.

I learned that I am both:

Mother.
Educator.
Advocate.
Protector.

And that my greatest strength—seeing multiple truths—
will always be paired with my greatest blind spot:

my own child.

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Years have passed since I wrote those words.

And here I am again.

Still practicing radical acceptance.
Just at a different layer.

Back then, radical acceptance felt like survival.

Now, it feels more like a practice.
A slow, imperfect, daily choice.

Now I am learning to accept what has happened.

The escalation.
The exhaustion.
The breaking point.
The decisions no parent imagines making.

Not because I agree with it.
Not because I think it’s fair.
Not because it makes sense.

But because arguing with reality only deepens the suffering.

I am learning to accept where we are.

Carter is not living under my roof right now.

A season with more quiet than chaos.
More space than noise.
More stillness than survival mode.

Our days are quieter.

And inside that space, I am discovering how many feelings can coexist.

I am learning to accept the unknown.

Not the poetic, romantic kind.
The real kind.

The kind where I don’t know what Carter’s future looks like.
I don’t know what level of independence he will reach.
I don’t know what settings will be right long-term.
I don’t know what our family rhythm will become.

And if I’m honest?

In the quiet of these days without the chaos Carter once brought,
I find myself holding two very different experiences at the same time:

Peace. And longing.
Rest. And grief.
Relief. And missing the messy.

There is rest in my body in a way I didn’t realize I had lost.

There is also a hollow ache that shows up in unexpected moments.

I miss the version of motherhood where he was always under my roof.

I miss the way his presence filled every corner of our house—
even when it was hard.

I also recognize how deeply broken I was becoming inside that constant crisis.

Both are true.

This, too, is radical acceptance:

Accepting that something can be necessary and heartbreaking.
Accepting that a calmer season does not mean an easier heart.
Accepting that a calmer nervous system does not automatically create a calm heart.
Accepting that I can be grateful for safety and still ache for closeness.
Accepting that loving your child sometimes means stepping into choices you never imagined you would have to make.
Accepting that I don’t get to write the future in neat paragraphs.

I keep catching myself trying to:

Plan five years ahead.
Predict outcomes.
Build a mental map so I don’t get blindsided again.

I want a map.
I want certainty.
I want a guarantee that all of this leads somewhere good.

But radical acceptance keeps whispering:

Come back.
Come back to today.

Not in a bypassing way.
Not in a “just be positive” way.

But in a grounded, honest way.

Today, Carter is safe.
Today, I am breathing.
Today, we are held.
Today, we are doing the next right thing.

Not all the right things.
Not forever things.
Not perfect things.

Just the next right thing.

I don’t know what our new normal is yet.

Maybe that’s okay.

Maybe I don’t need to define it.

Maybe this season isn’t about building a long-term narrative.

Maybe it’s about learning how to live without constant emergency.

Maybe it’s about discovering who I am when I’m not only in crisis management mode.

Maybe it’s about unlearning the belief that I have to figure everything out in order to be okay.

Maybe it’s about trusting that love doesn’t disappear when circumstances change shape.

Radical acceptance, for me, looks less like resignation and more like softening.

Softening my grip on how I thought life would go.
Softening my expectations of myself.
Softening the timeline.

It looks like letting grief and gratitude sit at the same table.

It looks like admitting I miss my son while trusting he is being cared for.

It looks like acknowledging that I am different now—
and allowing that to be true without trying to fix it.

Radical acceptance doesn’t mean I like any of this.

It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t rewrite parts of our story if I could.

It means I stop arguing with reality long enough to meet myself inside it.

Again.
And again.
And again.

I don’t feel “healed.”
I don’t feel finished.

I feel in-process.
I feel human.

I feel like someone learning how to live without constant emergency
and discovering that the absence of crisis comes with its own kind of disorientation.

This is not the story I would have chosen.

And.

This is the story I am living.

So I practice radical acceptance in small, quiet ways:

By coming back to my breath.
By telling myself the truth.
By allowing joy when it shows up.
By allowing sorrow when it shows up.
By trusting that I don’t have to know the whole path to take the next step.

This journey is still beginning.

I am still relieved.
I am still terrified.
I am still heartbroken.
I am still grateful.
I am still holding both.

I am not at peace with everything.

But I am making peace with being here.

And for now,
that feels like enough. 🤍